the road less travelled: delft island

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Rama Arya

Forty kilometres off the northern coast of Sri Lanka, is its farthest island—Delft.

It is an unusual name to come across for a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. After all, there is not much in common between the bleached island and the picture postcard region in Netherlands where white glazed pottery with blue decorations have been historically made. The 18th Century Dutch colonial rulers obviously felt differently; for them it was a perfect fit for their new home. Perhaps a gentle reminder of their roots in faraway lands.

Remote and sparsely populated, Delft is the largest island in the Palk Strait which separates Sri Lanka from the Indian subcontinent. Eight kilometres wide and 5.5 kilometres long, it is not just its name which is out of the ordinary. Delft Island used to be a coral reef in the distant past as revealed by the petrified coral chunks strewn on its emerald green beaches. Sans any streams, potable water is limited to catchment areas for surface water and a few pockets of ground water.

Despite these challenges, 1,300 Tamil Christian and Hindu families call the island their home today; their houses clustered around compounds in the north. Empty, windswept scrublands meanwhile stretch out in the south, right up to the rugged charred coastline. Continue reading →

travel diaries: hiking through the horton plains

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Rama Arya

There is a deafening silence as I enter the Horton Plains in the wee hours of the morning. Above me, the silver sun is still trying to find its way back into the sky. It is not an easy task.

A thick blanket of mist and cloud engulf me, the golden blades of montane grass, and the sand-spattered 3.5-billion-year-old Precambrian-era boulders. Every now and then a slight drizzle kisses my upturned face. I peer through the mist, strain my ears for another human sound. A footstep, laugh, threads of a conversation. All I can hear is my own breath. I look at my phone. There is no signal. Continue reading →

travel shorts: hill country—nuwara eliya to ella by train

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Rama Arya

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Most travellers are of the opinion that the only real way to see Sri Lanka is by train. And that of all the rail journeys through the sparkling tropical island, the most beautiful is the one from Nanu Oya [near Nuwara Eliya] to Demodara [near Ella] in the heart of ‘hill country.’ They are not wrong. 🙂

Built in the mid-19th Century by the British colonizers, the train’s primary purpose for the longest time was to transport crates of tea leaves and coffee from the mist-wrapped estates to Colombo Port. The segment from Nuwara Eliya, a colonial town, to Ella, a village steeped in Hindu mythology, is a tourism institution of sorts today. Continue reading →

jaffna: the unexplored north of sri lanka

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Rama Arya

Twenty-six years of civil war is a long time. A whole generation grows up exposed to the horrors of war, stripped of their right to education, health-care, and utilities. It is hard for one living in a ‘secure’ country to even fathom such dreadfulness day in and day out, year in and year out.

Sri Lanka’s LTTE-Sinhalese civil war started on 23 July, 1983 and ended on 19 May, 2009, during which an estimated 40,000 civilians died according to a UN Experts Report. Those who could leave, left the country. Root causes of the civil war were a series of anti-Tamil riots following independence in 1948 and the 1956 Government Act which recognized Sinhalese as the only official language.

Fuelled further by the government’s citizenship and education policies, it led to the creation of the LTTE or Tamil Tigers, as they were known, and their demand for a separate Tamil state ‘Tamil Eelam.’

Suicide bombers were a trademark of the Tamil insurgency. Even India, Sri Lanka’s neighbour, could not be immune to it. India’s ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a 22-year-old female LTTE suicide bomber.

Jaffna [Yalpanam in Tamil] on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, was the epicentre of this civil war which spread across the island’s northern and eastern coastlines. Mutilated factories, bombed homes, and walls pock-marked with gunshots are still scattered throughout the city and its surrounds. An echo of its turbulent past.

Three things, by some miracle, have survived from the nearly three decades of fighting: One, the region’s places of worship—magnificent colourful Hindu temples, poignant grand churches, and sacred Buddhist sites—two, its bygone colonial ruins, and three, a bunch of remote sleepy isles on the Palk Strait in the Indian Ocean. Continue reading →

the sigiriya frescoes: king kassapa I and his 500 damsels

Posted on March 25, 2024 by Rama Arya

477 AD. Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.

29-year-old Prince Kassapa was filled with a deep burning desire to be king. So deep, it seemed to completely engulf him. To be the ruler of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’s ancient historical spiritual heart. How wondrous would that be!

And he would have been. Could have been. Except for one problem. His mother was the non-royal wife of Moriya King Dhatusena. The rightful heir to the coveted throne was his young half-brother Moggallana, offspring of his father’s chief consort.

Not to be deterred, Kassapa I, also known as Kashyapa I, decided to lead a palace coup with the help of Migara, the army commander who had a personal grudge of his own against the king. Young Moggallana, meanwhile, managed to escape, and took refuge in South India.

When Kassapa demanded to know the location of his father’s treasury, his imprisoned father responded saying Anuradhapura’s water tank was his one-and-only treasure. Miffed on hearing this, Kassapa had his father entombed alive.

For the rest of his life, Kassapa’s subjects and rivals, as well as the local Buddhist monks, would call him Pithru Ghathaka Kashyapa meaning Kashyapa the Patricide. It was a label he would not be able to shake off even after death.

In a bid to start afresh, away from public disgrace and the threat of a possible future retaliation by Moggallana, Kassapa moved his capital 75 kilometres south. Here, deep in Sri Lanka’s tropical plains stood a 180-metre-high monolith volcanic rock pillar with unhindered 360-degree views for miles on end. Continue reading →